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Bush Victory Recalled As Florida Recount Looms
WASHINGTON (IslamOnline & AFP) - Republican George W. Bush’s apparent presidential victory was recalled just two hours after he was declared President as both CNN and NBC news broadcast stations withdrew their “call” of the crucial state of Florida as going for Bush. Florida will recount its vote today.
Pending the review in Florida, Democrat Al Gore withdrew a concession he made to Bush for the election as the election remains too close to call. Whoever wins Florida in the recount takes the White House.
In the split of the decisive 538 electoral votes, awarded on a state-by-state basis, Gore had 260 out of the 270 needed for victory, and Bush had 246. Outstanding were Florida (25) and Oregon (7).
In a roller coaster night, major TV networks first declared Tuesday evening that Florida would go to the Democratic vice president, then said it was too close to call.
Early Wednesday, the networks declared Bush the winner of Florida and its 25 electoral votes - which would have put him over the top for the White House - but a short time later reversed course again and said the race could not be determined.
At around 1:30 am (0730 GMT) at his Nashville, Tennessee, headquarters, Gore called Bush to concede the election after media accounts placed Bush's margin of victory in Florida around 50,000 votes.
On his way to make a public concession speech, Gore aides discovered that the margin in Florida was less than 1,000 votes, and the vice president scrapped his plans to await results.
In Florida, less than 2,000 votes separated Gore from Bush, with 100% of precincts reporting (3.8 million votes), state officials reported. Any difference below 0.5% triggers an automatic recount in the state. Some media reports said the margin might have been only a few hundred votes.
Florida state officials are saying that the recount must be finished, at the latest, by Thursday.
In addition to the recount, Florida has a large amount of absentee ballots that must be counted as well. Analysts state that the majority of those submitting absentee ballots – numbering close to 600,000 – are Republicans, which could bode well for Bush.
In Austin, Texas, a Republican throng already cheering a Bush victory turned abruptly silent, while the Texas governor again sweated out the results of the vote to choose a successor to President Bill Clinton.
Republican campaign chairman Don Evans told the crowd: "They are still counting and I am confident, when all is said and done, we will prevail."
In another twist to one of the most dramatic nights in U.S. election history, Vice President Gore took a late 49%-48% lead in the popular vote, which had gone Bush's way for most of the night.
In the symbolic popular vote, unofficial results showed Gore with 48,438,140 votes, some 200,000 ahead of Bush. Green Party candidate Ralph Nader had 2.6 million votes, or about three percent, but may have drawn enough votes to swing the election.
The tightness of the tallies raised anew the possibility that for the first time since 1888 one candidate could win the popular vote but fail to gain a majority of electoral votes and thus lose the White House.
Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth pledged a prompt recount and said he hoped that it could be completed "as soon as possible."
"Whether we ask for it or not, we are put in a position of determining who the next president of the United States is going to be," Butterworth said.
"So we owe something to the state, to the country, and really to the world, to make sure that whatever our vote might be, it's the accurate vote, it's the honest vote, and it's the vote of the people from the state of Florida."
Based on the Florida projection, television networks had given Bush, whose father occupied the White House from 1988 to 1992, the narrowest of margins over Gore in the battle for a four-year term as the 43rd U.S. chief executive.
The Republicans started to rejoice, believing Bush had led a sweep for the party that also saw them likely to retain majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate, which they have controlled since 1994.
A Bush victory would give them control of the executive and both chambers of Congress for the first time since 1954. But while they looked unlikely to lose much, if any of their 13-seat edge in the 435-member House, the 100-member Senate teetered on 50-49 split for the Republicans with one seat undecided.
The race between Bush, 54, and the 52-year-old Gore had shaped up as one of the closest seen in the United States. But little prepared the country for the gripping, roller coaster end game.
The call on Florida that put Bush one vote past the necessary 270 for an electoral majority was already a spectacular reversal from Tuesday evening, when all major networks had given the state to Gore.
Earlier, it looked like Gore could be poised to fulfill his quest for the presidency when networks late Tuesday declared him the winner in Florida, based on exit polls and with only a fraction of the votes counted. But the networks later rolled back after a round of frantic calls by Bush aides.
Ironically, it was Nader who helped Bush by garnering more than 96,000 votes in Florida, most of them likely taken from Gore.
Gore, who had trailed Bush in virtually all pre-election polls, rode an apparent surge late in the campaign to strong early showings in some of the most valuable swing states.
By early Wednesday, with Florida and Oregon still outstanding, Bush and his running mate, Dick Cheney, had captured 29 states to 19 plus the federal District of Columbia for Gore and his vice presidential nominee Senator Joseph Lieberman.
The popular vote margin could end up to be the closest since John Kennedy edged out Richard Nixon in 1960 by a margin of 49.7% to 49.6%.
The electoral vote margin was bound to be the narrowest since at least 1916 when Woodrow Wilson won re-election by 23 electors. It could end up the tightest since Rutherford Hayes' one-vote triumph in 1876.
In the most closely watched contest in Congress, First Lady Hillary Clinton beat Republican Representative Rick Lazio for a Senate seat in New York and became the first presidential wife elected to national office.
And in the state of Missouri, Democratic Governor Mel Carnahan, killed in a plane crash last month, still won posthumous election to the Senate. His wife Jean is expected to be named to the post.
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